Traditional forms of video entertainment are already saturated in most of the developed nations around the globe. Meanwhile, some of the more promising emerging markets are growing at a more gradual rate than was anticipated, due to current economic pressures.

The ten leading pay-TV operators in the United States collectively lost 20,600 subscribers in the last quarter of 2014. Cable TV operators collectively lost over 800,000 digital television subscribers in all of 2014. While overall television subscriber numbers in America remain flat.

According to PwC, 2014 deal values increased by more than 90 percent versus 2013, generally driven by three significant transformative deals in the Cable and Internet sub-sectors. Meanwhile, overall deal volumes remained steady year over year, with nearly 890 mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in 2014, that’s up by three percent from the prior year (866).

Looking back, last year was a period of great change and disruption for some of the legacy video entertainment market leaders across the globe. As an example, the overall worldwide pay-TV market is expected to have grown by just 5 percent in 2014 — surpassing 924.4 million subscribers.

U.S. TV viewers have a high interest in access to premium channels online without having a pay-TV subscription to that network through a cable or satellite provider. Fully 64% of survey respondents were interested, with about one-third of that group “very” interested.

Bernstein Research has introduced a new weekly tracking report analyzing ad-supported U.S. TV networks’ viewership on a year-over-year basis. The first version shows that for the week of November 10-16, audiences fell again across the board — down 8% for cable networks, 9% for broadcast and 17% for kids-oriented networks specifically. The declines were similar on a quarter-to-date basis as well.